Time to get really depressed.
Doctor Who has long been a vehicle for discussing social problems, using the lens of science fiction to create future (or past) dystopias that subtly reflect current travails with enough distance to dissect them fearlessly. The commentary, particularly strong in the era of Robert Sloman and Robert Holmes, seldom winds up as a stirring call to action, balancing entertainment against enlightenment quite neatly, leaving audiences at least a little more aware amidst the explosions and escapades. Graeme Curry, in “The Happiness Patrol” (Story Production Code 7L), follows this tradition after a fashion, tackling neither racism nor environmental decay, neither poverty nor the ills of unbridled capitalism. He rails against being phony.
From the opening shots of this three episode story, we see a bleak cityscape with piped-in muzak and a constant suggestion of fog, barren of ornamentation or individuality, a setting conducive to nothing but misery; yet being a “killjoy” here is a capital offense, punishable by instant death from the roving Happiness Patrols, staffed by women in pink wigs, mini skirts, and copious amounts of facial makeup. Veteran Doctor Who director Chris Clough amplifies the visual disconnection between giddy expectation and sombre reality well, but the basic story does not ever delve more deeply than the notion that people deserve to be allowed to be sad, darn it!
Keeping with the Seventh Doctor’s newly proactive streak, as seen with his somewhat casual eradication of his longtime foes in “Remembrance of the Daleks,” he and Ace arrive on the human colony Terra Alpha several centuries into the future (from 1988) to investigate rumors of “something evil,” not exactly a nuanced introduction to the situation. After being arrested on an immigration violation by the Happiness Patrol, they learn of the various disappearances that take place routinely on Terra Alpha at the behest of its ruler, Helen A. (Sheila Hancock), who wants people to be happy at any cost, and viewers are treated to a scene of one particularly sticky means of execution, death by hot strawberry fondant. The action goes off the rails rather quickly after this sweetly lethal treat.
For much of producer John Nathan-Turner’s run on the show, Doctor Who has dabbled in au courant philosophical and critical concepts, with media studies in particular being a particular wellspring: “Vengeance on Varos” serves as the show’s answer to McLuhan, an extended rumination on the televised versus the real, the image versus the substance, a theme repeated throughout the Sixth Doctor’s tenure; and “Dragonfire” revels in cinematic and existential references. Here, Curry seeks to expound upon “Weltschmerz,” the ineffable pain of existing in a world suffused with suffering. Heady stuff for a children’s show.
Doctor Who can certainly contain such discussions, being no stranger to either religious or ethical debate (albeit mostly filtered through aliens and their totally-not-human cultures). The mode taken with “The Happiness Patrol,” though, leans so heavily into an over-the-top dystopia, very much akin to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil from just a few years prior, that the entirety of the story is taken up with set pieces showing off just how absurd Terra Alpha has become, leaving no room for actual examination of sorrow, grief, and happiness, to say nothing of the loaded use of the term “disappearances,” an echo of Pinochet’s Chile and the Argentinian Junta. And that’s without addressing Curry’s signal, and somewhat regrettable, addition to the show’s rogues’ gallery…
The Kandy Man (David John Pope), a sweets-obsessed android, with a body made to look like (and indeed, notionally constructed of) various bits of confectionery, might have made sense in the First or Second Doctor’s runs, alongside the Celestial Toymaker or the Master Brain, in a time before more glitzy and refined effects became expected in science fiction media. But the somewhat haphazard construction of the Kandy Man aside, the very notion of a candy-making homicidal android made of candy pulls in the direction of farce, which, in conjunction with the extreme makeup and mannerisms of Helen A. and her Happiness Patrols, leaves one wondering just what this story is trying to accomplish besides guffaws.
The scripting takes great leaps between scenes, with the Doctor and a visiting psychology student/blues musician, Earl Sigma (Richard D. Sharp), finding their way into the Kandy Man’s lair, getting caught, and then escaping by fusing the android’s nougat feet to the floor with, um, lemonade. The Doctor then encounters the remnants of Terra Alpha’s indigenous inhabitants in the fondant piping beneath the lair before tasking a Galactic Census taker, Trevor Sigma (John Normington), with escorting him right into Helen A.’s control center. All the while, nothing is actually happening other than perfunctory action—running through tunnels and manholes, escaping little dog creatures (then blowing them up), outwitting dim functionaries. It’s all innocuous enough, but utterly meaningless. The Doctor simply flits from moment to moment, and Ace does the same, moving the plot along yet heightening the narrative not at all.
All this sound and fury costs quite a bit of the season’s already stretched budget. The last story of the production block, all three episodes of “The Happiness Patrol” overran their time slots, per Tat Wood’s invaluable About Time Volume 6, likely engendering very little goodwill on the upper floors of Television Centre, and one must wonder just why? For a three episode story, the speaking cast reaches great heights, with extras aplenty as well, far more than one would expect for an abbreviated tale, with the knock-on effect of the Seventh Doctor being shoehorned, at times, out of his own show. Quite a few practical effects, from the Kandy Man and its lair to multiple go-kart like machines, do appear, and, the licorice allsorts android aside, the costuming and effects work comes across quite well—the BBC wardrobe department seldom disappoints. But to spend such effort on “The Happiness Patrol” seems a waste.
Curry does concoct a clever conclusion, with the Doctor subverting the “twisted” logic of the planet by simply pretending to be happy. The demonstrating “Drones” from outside the city—another unexplored thread that just gets dropped into the story—protest while celebrating at the Doctor’s behest, protecting them. The frustration at not being able to kill the demonstrators causes the Happiness Patrol, captained by Daisy K. (Georgina Hale), to become “[t]he only killjoys in this square,” leading to confusion in the ranks as some members, like Priscilla P. (Rachel Bell) take their remit against depression literally and turn on their fellows. In the ensuing chaos, the protestors and regular citizens alike begin to tear down the muzak loudspeakers and wrest control of the city.
The end comes for Helen A. as her regime crumbles, though not in the form of retribution for years of oppressive dictatorship. As she tries to escape, the Doctor confronts her, laying out Curry’s thesis in the process:
The Doctor: A bag of sweets? A few tawdry party games? Bland, soulless music? Do these things make you happy? Of course they don’t. Because they’re cosmetic. Happiness is nothing unless it exists side by side with sadness.
She turns and sees her beloved pet, which has climbed out of the fondant tunnels and lies dying after being crushed by tons of crystalized sugar, and experiences sadness, against which she has railed for years. Her ultimate fate remains unexplored, as the Doctor and Ace leave, once again, before the hard work of rebuilding starts, pausing only to paint the TARDIS blue again, after it was slathered with pink paint early in the story, in case anyone missed the point.
We see only the merest glimpses of the people who live their lives under Helen A.’s enforced glee, encountering mostly former members of the Happiness Patrol who have soured on the mission and outsiders, like Earl Sigma and the indigenous inhabitants in the tunnels, who live around the regime’s restrictions without having to live under them. To that end, the liberation of Terra Alpha at the end of the story, brought on solely by the Doctor laughing in the face of the Happiness Patrol, feels like a rebellion without any rebels. It’s all off-screen, disconnected from the events we have been shown. The audience gets no real connection with the world, despite the setting being built up for three episodes.
The large guest cast takes a proportionally substantial share of the lines in “The Happiness Patrol,” with frequent scenes not involving the Doctor or Ace. Sheila Hancock, as Helen A., manages to avoid over-egging the role; there’s no guile in the presentation of the dictator as utterly sure of the rightness of her motives—a frequent symptom of dictatorship—lending an air of believability to the character even as the farcical events on screen pull viewers in the other direction. And, though the entire conception just fails to land, David John Pope as the Kandy Man brings some degree of nuance to the android as tortured sugar artist, such that one almost—almost—feels a twinge of regret as the robo-chef winds up melted by his own Fondant Surprise.
Sophie Aldred’s Ace gets very little room to exist in “The Happiness Patrol” despite several scenes without the Doctor. Only in her brief interactions with fellow killjoy Suzie Q. (Lesley Dunlop), where they discuss how awful it feels to be phony, does the character gain any definition, but Aldred continues to imbue the plucky teen with energy and verve. One never quite knows what Ace is going to get up to, especially when she’s not under the “Professor’s” watchful gaze. Given that this is the last story of the production bloc, though second aired, perhaps the intervening stories will provide that extra characterization, but any chance missed to develop Ace, and indeed every companion, should be taken. Doctor Who is as much their story as the Doctor’s.
If nothing else, “The Happiness Patrol” provides Sylvester McCoy the chance to showcase his multi-disciplinary talents. The Seventh Doctor croons (the first Doctor to do so?), he plays the spoons, he contorts himself in numerous pratfalls, and none of it seems forced, other than his smile when he frees Terra Alpha with a phony grin. Once more, the script calls on McCoy to adopt a “gritty” attitude at times, particularly when the Seventh Doctor pulls a gun to his chest and dares a terrified guard to kill him, face to face, as opposed to anonymous figures in the distance. He’s enough of an actor to pull off the scene, but it still feels jarring in relation to the rather convivial, self-effacing Doctor of the prior season. (Notably, Wood suggests the scene, which is at odds with the comparatively lighter tone of the rest of the story, comes from script editor Andrew Cartmel’s pen, part of his and Nathan-Turner’s efforts to change the Doctor back to a harder edged figure.)
Perhaps it is only in comparison to the story just prior, the superlative “Remembrance of the Daleks,” or when held up against stories that actually engage with their philosophical premise, no matter how successfully, such as “Vengeance on Varos,” that “The Happiness Patrol” pales. For all the narrative lacunae between scenes, the pacing alone keeps up interest, and the cast, both regular and guest, engages gamely with the script. Clough’s direction helps sell the disconnection between mandatory happiness and its lived reality, with an oppressiveness on screen that feels weighty, suffocating. But the story itself never gains that heft, a disappointment given that it boldly takes on the serious topic of the “disappearances” of the ’70s and ’80s. The essential point of the story—that suffering and happiness go hand in hand, neither truly existing without the other—remains a pop cultural slogan, something to be printed on a poster of a cat hanging off a branch rather than a meditation on Weltschmerz, one of central meanings of being human. Curry’s story tells us how important it is to embrace the fullness of human experience, to be true to ourselves as creatures who experience pain and joy, but it doesn’t show us.
(Previous Story: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Post 159 of the Doctor Who Project